


In Plain Sight

by akaparalian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (minor) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Harm to Animals, M/M, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 13:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: After the war with Voldemort, Keith Kogane struggles with putting the fight behind him, and spends much of his time in his Animagus form -- a small black cat -- wandering the streets of London. It's easier to spend time in that form than worry about the fact that he doesn't have Hogwarts to fall back on anymore, that many of his friends and classmates are dead, and that his only support system is a group of unregistered Animagi who aren't exactly on great terms with the Ministry.After his own war, Takashi Shirogane moves to London and meets a very strange cat.





	In Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> As part of the Sheith Prompt Bang, this story is accompanied by gorgeous, gorgeous art by Empathique!
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> Seriously, she did such a gorgeous job -- go check out her other work on [Tumblr](https://empathique.tumblr.com/) and [her portfolio](https://empathiquearts.wixsite.com/mysite) and also [Twitter](https://twitter.com/emisverysad)!

Shiro knows this part of town pretty well — better than he knows any other part of London, anyway — and he’s never seen a cat here before. 

Maybe that's kind of a silly thing to think; there aren't exactly any rules for where stray cats are or aren't allowed to go, or at least not ones that stray cats pay any particular attention to. And, well, he's not really even sure that this cat is a stray. It's awfully shiny and well-groomed for a stray, but then again cats groom themselves, unlike dogs or the kind of ragged-looking squirrels that sometimes hang around just outside his flat. And the cat is thin, but not _worryingly_ thin — not so thin that it couldn't, theoretically, be just a very slender housecat. (Slender enough that he'd want to have a word with the owner if he ever met them, but it's not like he can count its ribs, so that’s got to be something.) 

But, at any rate, this neighborhood strikes a perfect balance that makes it a touch inhospitable for stray cats, which is why Shiro finds it so odd that he's looking at one right now. For one thing, the area has high foot and motor traffic — too many passersby to make it a nice, safe place to be. For another, it's kept pretty clean, with no overflowing dumpsters or other food sources that might attract rats. For a third, it's also not got a lot of trees or green space, which means there aren't many squirrels, or birds, either, besides the occasional pigeon. So there's no food for a cat on the streets to eat, and enough cars to run them over and people to scare them off that it seems perfectly reasonable to Shiro that they'd all stay far, far away — and yet here this one is, napping in a beam of sunshine on a low brick wall that's just outside a block of flats as though it can’t be bothered by anything in the world. 

The cat is so black it almost looks purple in the light, and its eyes are shut tight. It's so still that Shiro might honestly think it were dead if not for the very faint but unmistakable rise and fall of its little chest. He's been standing here staring at it for at least a couple of minutes now, frozen on the sidewalk with his grocery bags in his hands, on his way back from the store. It's been long enough that he half-suspects someone is going to come out of one of the flats he's lurking outside and ask him what his problem is, but the cat must be deeply asleep, because it doesn't seem to have noticed him standing over it at all.

He can't describe it, but somehow he can't tear his eyes away. Shiro's always liked cats — he used to beg and beg and beg for one as a kid, even though he'd known his parents' lease didn't allow pets — but he doesn't usually stop and stare at every stray he passes in the street, especially not when it's a late June afternoon and he has frozen foods in his shopping bag that are going to thaw if he stands around in the hot sun for any longer.

Slowly, so slowly, he shifts all of his grocery bags to one hand and reaches the other — the flesh hand, because he wants to be able to actually feel if that fur is as soft and sleek as it looks, thanks — out toward the cat's flank. It's so stupid of him, to startle a sleeping cat like that and expect it to go well, especially given that he doesn’t know at all if this particular cat is friendly or if he’s going to end up getting scratched, but it's like he's hypnotized, his hand shaking slightly as it hovers just above inky-black fur.

And that, of course, is when the cat's eyes spring open — not amber or green or yellow like Shiro might have expected, but an incredible blue that almost looks violet, even by comparison to the almost-purple black of its fur; it's a color he's never even come close to seeing in any living creature's eyes before, let alone a cat's — and it stares at Shiro, with his hand still hovering over its flank, for just a moment before hissing and darting away, disappearing around the corner of a building and out of sight almost before he can blink. By the time he unfreezes from his shock and jogs over to where he'd last seen it, it's disappeared completely, and he's left to finish the rest of his walk home feeling like he's missed out on some kind of opportunity.

— 

It's not the first time a Muggle has come up to Keith while he's a cat — that's what he gets, he supposes, for ending up with a _cute_ Animagus instead of, like, a raven, or a rat, or something. At least he's still something that can easily be seen in the city without causing alarm, though; Kolivan's a bear, and Antok is a panther, and the best either of them could probably do would be if they somehow transformed themselves inside of a zoo exhibit. 

Being a cat Animagus means that he's had more than his fair share of curious children trying to pet him before their parents notice and pull them away, usually scolding them about stray animals and rabies and fleas and whatever, or good Samaritans trying to adopt him, or people who call animal control and force him to use a touch of wandless magic to get away before someone can put him in a cat carrier and take him to a shelter — or else to get _out_ of said cat carrier once he's in it, which had only happened once, because it had been so humiliating that he had learned his damn lesson _quite_ quickly. So, really, almost getting patted by this guy — this _one_ guy — shouldn't be messing with him as much as it is, but is _is._ It really, really is.

It's not the first time that a Muggle has come up to Keith while he's a cat, and it's not the first time said Muggle has been an objectively attractive adult male, either. These things happen. Actually, the animal control guy had been pretty cute, though that had been far from the top of Keith's mind at the time. And, anyway, Keith may not get a lot of dates these days, but he’s not so hard up for human contact that he swoons at the sight of any and all gorgeous men.

Though, he has to admit, this one had been _particularly_ gorgeous. Dark hair and gray eyes is an intriguing combination, and the hint of a smile Keith had seen in the instant before he’d leapt away had been captivating, too. Still, he tells himself firmly, there’s nothing there that’s any more enticing than any other pretty person on the street, nor any more memorable. So why can’t he shake the man from his mind for the rest of the week?

The distraction, though, isn’t entirely unwelcome. After all, he’d only been out at all because it had been a particularly bad day. It’s easier to be a cat, on the bad days, than it is to be a wizard; that had been part of why Kolivan and the rest had encouraged him to become an Animagus after the war, above and beyond the fact that they all were, and he would have done it _eventually_. Still, seventeen is young — not many are capable of becoming Animagi so young, and it had taken Keith a bit of dedicated study. But he’d been surrounded by Animagi, and they’d been able to help him; the Blades take care of their own, no matter what the Ministry thinks of them.

And it’s not as though Keith could have easily reached out to anyone else for help; that’s certainly one of the downsides of being an unregistered Animagus. If he wanted advice about any part of the process, or the magic involved, it more or less _had_ to be from the Blades, because they were just about the only people he could trust not to turn him in. Even Allura Altea, who he knew best of anyone from his year at Hogwarts, was… well, she was _Allura Altea._ Her father was the Minister of Magic, for god’s sake. He wasn’t about to tell her he was breaking the law and expect her not to feel duty-bound to report him, and he refused, and still refuses, to put her in that position.

He doesn’t regret becoming an Animagus, though — far from it. It’s been one of the best parts of his life, especially because he does still have trouble, sometimes, with the effects of the war and, especially, the Battle of Hogwarts. The whole war had been a nightmare, obviously, for everyone, but he hadn’t been allowed to join the Blades in the thick of it; they’d all insisted, especially Kolivan and Krolia, that he stay at Hogwarts, both because it was marginally safer for him there and because, as they argued, he was the only person they could really station there to try and protect the student body. He’d always felt that that last bit had been little more than an excuse designed to keep him from just leaving school and meeting up with them anyway, but, on the other hand, he _had_ done a lot of good there, along with the rest of the student rebellion. 

But no matter how much good he’d done, the war had been horrible, and the Battle of Hogwarts had been a crystallization of that, and many people he’d known had died right in front of him — worse, many had died because he hadn’t been able to save them. Keith felt then, and has felt in the year since, that he _should_ have been able to save them — that he should, somehow, have been able to save _all_ of them.

Cats, though, don’t think like that. So on days when his brain gets particularly loud, or the memories of the war are particularly insistent, sometimes it helps to be a cat — especially a cat out in the streets of Muggle London, where nothing is familiar and everything seems to smell just a little bit sharper and more metallic than it does in the winding alleys and dim shopfronts of wizarding parts of town.

Being a cat is lovely: all it requires of him is finding a nice sunbeam, and preferably an out-of-the-way place to lay down and rest, and for a few hours, at least, he doesn’t have to think about anything in particular. He’s still _himself —_ still, in point of fact, a person, and not _actually_ a cat — but there’s a sort of comforting blanket over all of his particularly human concerns, and in their place, his worries take the shape of pigeons to stalk, smells to avoid, and sun-warmed places to rest.

And, apparently, beautiful Muggles who try to pat him.

It’s ridiculous, he thinks for not the first time, as, a week later, he finds himself padding back to the same neighborhood. It’s ridiculous, but at least thinking about how ridiculous it is is better than thinking about any of the _other_ things which are clouding his head, and anyway, ridiculous or not, he can’t see the harm. Even if, this time, he stayed still and let the Muggle pat him, surely it wouldn’t be the end of the world. His cat brain certainly doesn’t think so, but even his human brain can’t seem to see the risk.

—

“Huh,” Shiro says, more or less to himself, as he comes to a stop in the middle of the pavement. He’s experienced deja vu before, but never quite this strongly. Here he is, again, with his groceries clutched in one arm, and here’s the black cat, again, curled right up asleep on the same little patch of wall, just the same as a week or so ago.

He’s absolutely positive it’s the same cat, though he can’t quite put his finger on why. Maybe it’s the color — you’d think that black wouldn’t be so distinctive, but that so-black-it’s-purple sheen isn’t exactly common to other black cats Shiro’s seen. And, anyway, it’s probably not _that_ much of a stretch to assume that it’s the same cat; it would make sense for it to stay more or less in one area, roaming around in places that are familiar. It’s not _that_ weird to see it twice — if anything, it’s probably only weird that he’s only ever seen the cat these two times.

“One way to find out for sure,” he mutters to himself, a little sardonically and punctuated with a wry twist of the lips, and then, just as before, he approaches slowly and steadily, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible. A car rumbles by in the street behind him, and then another going the opposite direction, and the cat doesn’t twitch — but when Shiro reaches out to touch it, before his hand makes contact with the fur, its eyes flash open.

This time, though, it doesn’t move — just pins him with a piercing blue-violet stare, still curled up in a little black ball. Shiro freezes, staring right back, his hand hovering just centimeters from the cat’s flank, almost frightened to even breathe, lest he scare it away again. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, very quietly, and the cat blinks at him. It’s probably just the unusual color, but Shiro would almost swear that those eyes seem more intelligent than they should — more human than feline, even with the slitted pupil. If those eyes are intelligent, then they’re certainly also wary; the cat’s attention stays absolutely focused on Shiro, and Shiro, in turn, stays absolutely still. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeats, even though he feels a little ridiculous saying it. It’s not like the cat can understand him, but the way it flicks its ear as he speaks makes him feel like at least the gentle, soothing tone must be working. “I just wanted to give you a little love. You look like a good kitty. I’m not going to do anything to you, I promise.”

Slowly, so slowly, he lowers his hand the last remaining couple of centimeters, and between one heartbeat and the next, he makes contact with warm, soft fur. He smiles without meaning to, the expression infectious and impossible to control, and laughs a little, quietly. “There we go,” he says, slowly, gently stroking down the cat’s flank, making sure not to get too close to its head, though he longs to scratch it behind the ears. “See, that’s not so bad, is it?”

The cat blinks at him, then lets out a soft, low sound, a little _mrrrow_. But then its eyes slide shut again, which feels like a tacit acceptance of his touch, and Shiro gets a little bolder with his stroking, adding a little scratch along the spine that makes the cat shift over a little, towards his hand.

“I knew you’d like me once you got to know me,” he says, laughing again, and then shifts his weight so that he’s leaning up against the wall, taking a moment to set his groceries down on the ground. “I don’t get to spend a lot of time with cats these days, unfortunately, but my college roommate’s cat would tell you I’m very good at this.”

Distantly, he’s glad that there’s not really anyone walking nearby at this exact moment — not close enough to hear him talking to the cat, at least, given that he’s talking pretty quietly. But the cat keeps one ear turned toward him, even though its eyes are closed, and that’s really all the motivation Shiro needs to keep talking, continuing in the same quiet, soothing voice.

"You know," he says, "I'm really glad I saw you here again. I didn't mean to scare you the other day, but I know I'm a stranger, and I'm a lot bigger than you are." He's a lot bigger than most _humans_ are, let alone a cat, but humans are usually polite enough not to full-on run away at the sight of him. Shiro grins down at the cat a little, eyeing the sunbeam it's laying in, and adds, "I kind of want to jump up on the wall with you, because standing like this is starting to feel weird, but something tells me that would just scare you off again, and I don't want to do that."

He considers the height of the wall, and his own reach, and the likelihood that he'll be very sore if he awkwardly cranes his arm up so that he can pet the cat as he's sitting on the ground, and decides the soreness is probably worth it, because the cat is _really_ soft, and also because petting it is so soothing that it honestly shocks him. 

"Okay," he says, "I'm gonna try this instead," and settles on the ground, cross-legged. The wall barely comes up to his hip standing, so it's not impossible to reach from the ground, but it is hard. As he sits down, though, he looks away from the cat as he arranges his limbs on the ground, and when he looks back, there's a little black furry face peeking over the edge of the wall at him, blue-violet eyes wide and curious and blinking slowly at him, almost more owlish than cat-like. 

"This is a lot more comfortable," Shiro informs the cat, then reaches up to pet it and winces a little. "Okay, well, _that's_ not, but sitting is, anyway."

He can lean fully against the wall now, resting as much of his weight on it as possible, and he even gets to share a little in the sunbeam that the cat has been enjoying. He closes his eyes for a moment and lets the warmth wash over his face, something that seems like it's become a lot rarer since he moved to London. Partly that's due to the weather, partly to the difference between an urban area like this one and the more suburban area where Shiro had been living before, while he was still in recovery and adjusting to his prosthetic -- his hometown, back in the house he'd grown up in, feeling out of place and ill-fitting.

He frowns a little, opening his eyes to look back up at the cat. "There's another reason I'm glad to see you," he admits, feeling incredibly daring as he reaches up with one finger to poke at the twitching black nose that's just barely visible over the edge of the wall. The cat jerks back when he tries it, but not too far, and Shiro laughs to himself again, grinning and ducking his head to hide it, as though the cat could possibly know what it means that he's grinning, let alone care. But then the grin fades, and he looks back up at it through his fringe, his mouth taking on a much wryer twist.

"It's just nice to have something familiar in this neighborhood," he says. "Another living thing, I mean, not just a building or a sign or a landmark. A living creature that I recognize. That I know." He pauses, and the cat slowly creeps closer to the edge again, peering down just like before. This time, Shiro reaches up with the intent to pat, and is allowed to rub it gently behind the ears, which makes him smile all over again. "You might have guessed from my accent, but I'm not from around here," he continues, and laughs at the way the cat tilts its head in apparent interest. "And I haven't been here long. So you're really one of my first friends in London. Congratulations."

And the cat honest to God meows right back at him, a slightly warbling sound that sounds halfway to speech — and, almost even better, it reaches out with a paw to bat at the extended hand that Shiro's been using to scratch it, and wraps its grasp, claws carefully sheathed, around his hand, drawing it close enough to headbutt it.

Shiro's mouth drops open around a laugh, his eyes going wide; for a long moment, he just stares, and then he reaches up with the other hand, too, until he's scratching the cat behind the ears with one hand and having the other rubbed insistently across the cat's cheek. It's scent-marking him, claiming him as familiar; in some small way, it's returning what he'd just said, saying it back. And even though a cat is just a cat, and this one can't, obviously, have any idea what it's doing, Shiro's chest feels tight and his breathing feels shaky as he sits there and pets it, not even thinking about the awkward angle his arms are at or how strange he must look to passersby.

"Yeah," he says, quietly, more to himself than anything. "Me, too, little guy." And he sits there and pets the cat for an inordinately long time.

— 

Okay, so the first time had been a random encounter that had stuck weirdly in his head and nothing more, but Keith's willing to admit that the second time might have been the start of a problem.

He honestly has no idea how long he sat there on that wall with the stranger petting him, rubbing his cheeks all over the guy like some kind of harlot, listening to him talk in his quiet, steady voice about moving to London and feeling out of sorts and even, in brief hints, about some kind of war, maybe, or military service. The stranger is clearly American, or has an American accent, anyway — Keith can't tell what kind, but not obviously Southern or anything like that, which means he could be from basically anywhere. He could be Canadian, even, or he could be from somewhere else and just learned English in America to give him the accent, and Keith has a million questions about that and everything else that he wants to ask, except there's no way that he can, because the stranger thinks that he's a cat.

The first time had been a stranger approaching him on the street and trying to pet him, because he's an adorable black cat, and people like to pet those. That was fine. 

The second time, Keith had sat on a wall for nearly an hour as a man had talked to him in broad, rambling swathes about his recent personal history, his childhood, an injury that had claimed one of his arms, his move to London, how he was lonely, how he was unsettled. And all the while, the guy had thought he was talking to a cat — essentially himself, and certainly not to anyone who was really listening, who would be able to understand all of the personal things he was saying. But Keith isn’t _just_ a cat. Keith is an Animagus, a wizard. He had, in an odd sort of way, been eavesdropping. And now he feels really, really weird about it, becuase while he’d previously noticed that the man was attractive, now there’s something that feels far more dangerous curling in the pit of his stomach: attraction, yes, but with it curiosity, even affection.

He won’t go back, he tells himself fiercely as he lies in bed that night, after. At least not as a cat, and not in that particular place. He won’t go back. Better to let the stranger think he’d been — oh — adopted, or picked up off the street, or hit by a car, or something. Better not to let it go on any longer than it already has, or get any weirder than it’s already gotten.

He won’t go back.

He won’t.

—

Third time’s the charm, Shiro tells himself the next week, walking back from the grocery store. Maybe today, the cat will let him pick it up. Maybe today, he’ll see if he can take it home; he bought a can of tuna in half-baked hope, feeling silly even as he did it, and it’s sitting in the bottom of his shopping bag, incredibly conspicuous in his mind even though it’s completely invisible to the outside world.

The weather isn't great, though — drizzly and cool and gray, and thoroughly devoid of sunbeams. Really, he hopes the cat is curled up somewhere warm, out of the rain, safe from the elements. Still, Shiro tells himself, if it's not, then it's really just as well that he's looking for it today. He can get it out of the weather, if it'll just let him, and that way he won't be worrying.

He turns the corner onto the stretch of road where he's seen the cat before, eyes immediately seeking out that low wall, scanning the familiar spot for a pool of inky fur. His heart sinks when he sees that the wall is empty; he looks around a little, hoping that maybe the cat's just sought out a covered area and might still be nearby, but no dice. There aren't any signs that the cat has ever been here, let alone that he's here now, hiding somewhere. _Oh, well,_ Shiro thinks, frowning a little as he peers over the side of the wall again just to be sure, and then tries again to convince himself that this is for the best — hopefully, the cat's inside a house somewhere, sitting near a heater, or curled up on a soft blanket. Shit, _Shiro_ would very much like to be home now, curled up with a soft blanket and a cup of tea. If he's not going to see his little friend, then he'd better get on home, anyway.

And then, from behind him, there's a sudden, horrible yowl, and the harsh barking of a dog. 

Shiro turns on his heel and immediately sprints for the noise; there's a person yelling over the dog now, and by the time Shiro turns the corner onto a side-street and sees a person pulling their dog away by the leash, the little brown thing straining full-strength against the leash and still barking at what seems to be a hissing garbage can.

There are other stray cats in London, Shiro tells himself, but as he brushes past the person with the dog, who's leading their dog away anyway, scolding it loudly, and pushes the garbage can aside to get a good look, sure enough, it's the one stray cat in all the world that he's come to see today.

"Shit," he mutters, staring down at the cat. He falls to his knees immediately, but the cat scrambles away from him, hissing, ears flat to its head. It's bleeding badly from the shoulder, and favoring that side heavily — the dog seems to have bitten it, and there are clumps of fur missing all around the wound. " _Shit._ Okay, little buddy, I'm gonna need you to trust me."

He reaches for the cat, mentally scrambling through the process of Googling the nearest vet's office, and should he call a ride or can he walk, and would he even be allowed to bring the cat with him in a car — but none of it matters, because his fingers close on empty air.

For a creature leaving a trail of blood specks behind it, the cat moves remarkably fast, and Shiro has to scramble up and after it, calling "Wait!" even though he knows how useless that is — if anything, yelling at it is probably just going to scare it more. But it's instinct, just like the instinct that has him racing down the street, heart pounding, as though he knows even the slightest thing about what to do with an injured cat.

Shiro may be human-sized, and not injured, but the cat is light on its feet and clearly knows this part of down better than he does — and, beyond that, it can slip between things and through holes that Shiro has to go around or under. But he can't just let it go, not without knowing that it'll be okay, and so he grits his teeth and follows as best he can, through a twisting maze of streets and back alleys, wishing he'd been a bet better about keeping up his cardio program after he got to London. 

As he turns the corner into a particularly narrow alleyway, he draws suddenly to a stop, thinking for a moment that the cat's finally gotten away from him. The walls on either side are so close that Shiro could brush each with his hands if he held out his arms, and there's a not-so-subtle stink of urine from the grimy bricks, which the steady drizzle of rain is doing nothing to negate, unfortunately. There's a pile of old cardboard boxes to one side, a little ways away, and when it shifts slightly, Shiro jumps, then shakes himself, crossing to it with shaking hands.

Sure enough, as he pulls a box to the side, he finds the cat staring up at him, its eyes wide and slightly unfocused. On closer examination, the wound is worse than it had looked before -- probably worsened by running through the city, Shiro thinks with a pang of guilt. The cat is obviously exhausted, its sides heaving, and it doesn't even try to run away from Shiro again; it just looks up at him and lets out an odd warble, low and wavering, and then its eyes start to slip shut just as Shiro kneels down to try and get a better look at it, and something impossible happens.

Just as the cat falls unconscious, between one moment and the next, it shifts and warps right before his eyes. In one moment, there’s a tiny, furry black body flopped on the ground at Shiro’s feet, bleeding sluggishly and wet from the rain; in the next, there’s a human being, growing out of the cat too quickly to quite be grotesque but just slowly enough that Shiro’s sure of what he’s seeing, despite the fact that it absolutely _can’t_ be happening. But whether or not he thinks it can, it does, and then there’s a guy laying on the ground, somehow not naked, bleeding very obviously from the shoulder, unconscious, right where the cat used to be.

The guy, Shiro thinks very slowly and carefully, _is_ the cat. Or was, and maybe still is. 

“This is the cat,” he says, out loud, as though that will make it seem any less ridiculous, any more real. It doesn’t. It really, really doesn’t, and Shiro spends another long moment just staring — at the swoop of hair stuck to the guy’s forehead with rainwater and sweat, slightly curling from the humidity and the exact same shade of black as the cat’s fur had been, and at the way he almost looks like he’s frowning, even though his face is slack with unconsciousness. 

Okay. Well. Shiro definitely can’t take him to the vert now, but, he realizes, gears turning slowly in his head as he continues to stare blankly down at the impossible stranger laying on the ground, he’s not really sure that he can take him to a hospital, either. What if there’s something different about him, biologically? There has to be, doesn’t there? Or what if someone asked Shiro how he got hurt like that?

But if not the hospital, then _where?_

“Out of the rain,” he decides, barely even noticing that he’s started talking to himself. “And then I can — I’ll call — I’ll call Matt. He might know more than I do.”

It’s an entirely half-baked plan, not in the least because he’s not exactly sure what good Matt’s going to be able to do via Skype from all the way across the ocean, but it’s better than nothing — and it’s definitely better than continuing to let this guy bleed out in the street. It’s something to _do_ , anyway. And, Shiro realizes, looking around, their mad dash through the streets had actually lead them closer to his flat, so that’s something. It won’t be a far walk. 

So, until he thinks of something better, anyway, he resolves to do the best he can. He hitches his almost-forgotten grocery bag over one shoulder, gathers the stranger up into his arms — he feels worryingly light, but Shiro’s got bigger fish to fry right now; he can’t afford to spend time worrying about _that_ , of all things — and turns to make his way home.

—

The dream is confusing and hazy; even so, for a long time, Keith doesn’t realize that it’s a dream. After all, the stranger is there, and surely he’s not far enough gone to be dreaming about him. His shoulder hurts — burns, really — but that doesn’t seem entirely important somehow; the stranger is leaning over him, arms around him, and Keith is somewhere soft, and the walls around him are blue and seem to stretch on and on, impossibly.

His awareness fades in and out, and he can’t shake the very odd feeling that he’s missing a limb — no, not a limb, he realizes, his tail. Where did his tail go? And sensation from his whiskers seems muffled, too, but maybe that’s just the dream. His awareness fades out again, and he doesn’t make any effort to stay present, instead letting himself be carried on a wave of darkness and quiet, forgetting that he was ever dreaming at all.

—

“Okay,” Matt says, his voice scratchy through Shiro’s laptop’s less-than-great speakers, leaning back and stretching his arms over his head. Shiro mirrors the action, trying to ease the tension out of his shoulders even as he stares worriedly across the room from where he’s seated at his desk to the man in his bed. He looks more at ease now; he’d almost come to a couple of times while Shiro was carrying him to the flat, and then again when Matt was guiding Shiro through cleaning up his shoulder, though he hadn’t said anything either time. He’d just stared up at Shiro, his eyes unfocused and his brow furrowed, and occasionally made small, pained noises — almost animalistic, as though he didn’t realize he wasn’t still a cat.

“Thank you,” Shiro says quietly, dragging his gaze away from the stranger for long enough to meet Matt’s eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

Matt flaps a hand at him, and says, “You know it’s no problem. Besides, you can pay me back for the crash course in first aid by explaining to me again why the hell you couldn’t just take this guy to a hospital.”

Shiro glowers at his webcam. “I know it sounds crazy, but you said you weren’t going to call me out on it.”

“You’re right,” Matt agrees. “I said I wouldn’t call you out for something crazy. But ‘I was carrying a knife and I tripped and stabbed someone’ is crazy. ‘We can’t go to the hospital because he’s on the run for murder’ is crazy. ‘This guy was a stray cat and then he turned into a human’ goes a little bit beyond _crazy_. I mean, that’s…”

“I _know_ ,” Shiro insists, frowning, because, after all, he _does_ know. Matt’s only hearing about it; Shiro had been the one who had to witness it firsthand and contemplate whether or not he’d just found a bug in the Matrix or some shit. 

He has no idea how you’re supposed to go about telling anyone about something like this without sounding like you’re playing a prank on them, or off your rocker, or both. But of all the people in all the world, Matt Holt is the one Shiro most trusts to believe him — never mind the fact that he also knows a fair bit about first aid, thanks to a childhood spent playing with dangerous lab equipment and power tools without a whole lot of adult supervision. Shiro watched him stitch himself up in college more times than he can count, so he’d felt like a pretty good bet to call for help.

Still, apparently even Matt’s willingness to believe the impossible — which stretches to an absolute, immovable belief that he’d seen a UFO the time he took his little sister on a road trip to Roswell, despite the fact that he’d been drunk at the time — may have hit its limits with cats that turn into people right in front of your eyes. He's giving Shiro a look that's disconcertingly similar to the one he'd used when Shiro told him he'd lived on nothing but mac and cheese for a month, or when his sister Pidge tried to mix caffeine pills directly into her coffee to pull double-all-nighters in her workshop at the ripe old age of fourteen. Shiro knows that look; it means *you're being ridiculous, and you need to stop, because I'm worried about you.* Matt's as much of a hot mess as anyone else Shiro knows, but he's also disturbingly practical when he needs to be, and more realistic and pragmatic than a lot of people give him credit for. 

Shiro bites his lip. He doesn't know how, but he really, really needs to be sure that Matt believes him, and doesn't think he's making this up, or hallucinating, or God only knows what else.

Finally, after a period of silence, Matt shakes his head, a fond, wry smile on his face. “You get into the _weirdest_ shit, Shiro. I mean, seriously.”

“It’s not like I’m _trying!”_ Shiro says, grinning back a little helplessly.

“That makes it worse,” Matt informs him, then glances at something off-screen. “Hey, listen, I’d better go; I have a few more things to take care of tonight, and it’s already way late here. You and your buddy gonna be good for the time being?”

“I think so,” Shiro replies. “It seems like he’s sleeping well.”

“Cool. Call me if you need anything else, though, okay?” Matt says. “Seriously. Even if it’s like four AM.”

“Even if it’s four AM,” Shiro promises, with a small wave to the camera. “Now go get to work.”

“This is the thanks I get for helping you out,” Matt grumbles, but his eyes are shining, and it looks like he’s barely holding back a grin. “See you later.”

“Yeah, see you,” Shiro echoes, and then the connection closes, leaving him in the silence of his flat, with a stranger in his bed. He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face and shutting his eyes for a moment. Okay. Matt was a huge help and doesn’t necessarily think he’s insane, and the stranger looks like he’s doing okay, but also, he used to be a cat, and Shiro’s still not quite sure how to handle that, or if it’s a sign that he really _is_ going crazy across the pond all alone.

“I guess I’ll found out when you wake up,” he mutters under his breath, before finally tearing his eyes away from the stranger sleeping soundly in his bed and moving to get up. There’s no sense in just watching the guy sleep, he tells himself firmly, and it’s not like he doesn’t have other things to do. All of the questions running through his mind will be answered, but not by staring at an unconscious person. For now, he’ll just have to do his best to put his curiosity out of his mind, no matter how impossible a task that is, and trust that he’s done as best he can with helping out for now and just be patient and wait for some explanation that will make sense of all the nonsense that seems to have fallen in his lap lately.

—

Keith wakes up slowly and uncertainly, unable to dismiss the feeling, as he slowly pushes towards consciousness, that something is wrong. It’s only when he finally blinks open his eyes, mumbling and groaning under his breath, that he realizes he’s not in his own bed, or the bed in Kolivan’s guest room, or his Hogwarts dorm, or any place that he’s ever seen before at all, and he sits bolt upright, gasping.

Or, at any rate, he tries to, and then gasps again as he falls back into the pillows, clutching at his shoulder as a searing pain all but knocks him flat.

“Careful!” someone says, a voice that he can’t quite place but that seems somehow familiar all the same, and Keith startles, jumping at the noise in a way that makes his shoulder flare with pain all over again. He cries out wordlessly, and a moment later there’s a hand on his good shoulder, large and steady and warm.

“Easy, easy,” that voice says again, and Keith finally manages to focus through his panic long enough to look up at the person who’s now looming over him, and as soon as he does, the breath leaves his lungs. _Oh_. Oh, it’s the stranger — except he’s gripping Keith’s very human shoulder, and all of that means more than Keith can force through his brain at the moment.

“Who —” he gasps, eyes wide and wild, “how —”

“Easy,” the stranger repeats, his own eyes full of concern beneath a floppy forelock. “It’s okay, I promise. It’s — it’s okay. You’re safe.”

Somehow, that’s not even something Keith was worried about. He’s confused as hell and he’s in a lot of pain, but he realizes only when the stranger says it that he’d known, on some instinctive level, that he was safe here.

“How —” he tries again, then finally manages, “how did I get here? How did you—”

“I saw you — uh, transform?” the stranger says, sounding slightly uncertain and almost sheepish about it. He shifts slightly, so that he can sit down on the edge of the bed where Keith is lying, and Keith notices for the first time that he’s wearing pajamas. The clock on the bedside table confirms that it’s well past a reasonable hour, and that sends a whole new cloud of worries rushing through him: has anyone noticed that he’s gone? Are they worried, are they looking for him? Of all the _stupid_ things to do, going out into Muggle London in his Animagus form — 

And _that’s_ when it fully hits him that the stranger — the _Muggle_ stranger — has just said that he saw Keith transform, that he realizes, though he might not yet know that he realizes it in so many words, that Keith is a wizard. That he’s not _normal_. Keith’s never been especially concerned with most rules, but the Statute of Secrecy is kind of a big deal even for former teen delinquents.

“You saw me?” he echoes, his voice sounding distant to his own ears.

The stranger nods slowly. “Yes. How much do you remember?”

Keith takes a deep breath, trying to think. He thinks back, as much as he can, and finds to his dismay that the last thing he can remember is running terrified, hurt and bleeding and knowing that he had to get away from the exact same man who’s now sitting not half a meter from him.

“There was a dog,” he says slowly, and the stranger nods, looking relieved. “And you… I guess I didn’t get away, if you saw me?”

“I had to help you — I mean, you were bleeding pretty intensely,” the guy says a little defensively, arching an eyebrow. “I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was going to take you to a vet, but then...”

Keith nods, looking down at his shoulder. It’s bandaged pretty thoroughly, and there’s a little trail of butterfly bandages over some scratches further down his arm. “Vet wouldn’t have liked me very much,” he mutters, then glances up at the stranger from under his fringe. “Thank you. For — well, for not going straight to the papers about me, for starters.” He can only assume that the reason he’s not already sitting in a cell at the Ministry awaiting trial is that the man hasn’t told the rest of the Muggle world about the cat he found who had turned out to be a man.

“Of course not,” the man says, sounding a little offended. “I mean — don’t get me wrong, I have some questions, but I’m pretty sure no one would have believed me even if I _had_ tried to tell them about… you. Whatever you are.”

 _Well_ , Keith thinks, blinking up at him a little more directly. _At least I get to chose whether or not I actually, properly out the entire Wizarding world to a Muggle just because he’s got lovely eyes._

That’s oversimplifying matters a little, and he feels silly even as he thinks it, but his brain isn’t really operating at full capacity at the moment, so honestly. it’s the best he can do.

“Right,” Keith says, his whole body tense again suddenly — which doesn’t really help the shoulder. “Whatever I am.”

The man laughs softly, quirking an eyebrow. “Well, I sort of hoped at least _you_ would know.”

Keith flushes, not sure whether the heat in his cheeks is more due to embarrassment or annoyance. “Of course _I_ know,” he bites back. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I generally try not to be,” the stranger replies seriously, seeming in much better humor now that Keith is irritated, which — probably should be irritating rather than charming, but honestly, that’s way, way down the list with regard to Keith’s current concerns.

He looks away, desperately trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do. He really, really doubts that this guy is going to take ‘no’ for an answer — and nor should he, honestly; Keith sure wouldn’t, in his shoes. He saw a cat turn into a human being. There’s not a lot of getting around that.

“What’s your name?” he blurts, in hopes that maybe he can at least turn the conversation away from himself. It won’t last for long, he’s sure, but hopefully it will last at least long enough for him to come up with _something_.

The stranger blinks. “Oh! Uh — Shiro. Takashi Shirogane, but — Shiro. Sorry, I probably should have mentioned that before.” He smiles and scratches the back of his head a little and generally looks so at ease that it makes Keith kind of want to scream. “And yours?”

Well, that, at least, is a question that Keith is more than confident that he can answer. “Keith,” he says, still avoiding the man’s — Shiro’s — gaze. “Kogane. Are — you sound American.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, letting his hands fall to his lap. “I’m from California. I only moved here a little while ago, after I — well.” He pauses and waves his prosthetic hand slightly, then clears his throat. “I think I might have, uh — mentioned the move to you before.”

Right, Keith remembers, fighting the urge to smack himself in the forehead. Shiro _had_ mentioned that — Keith had just been feline at the time. He’s unintentionally walked himself right back around to the topic he’s been trying to avoid, and based on the expectant expression he can see out of the corner of his eye, Shiro knows he knows that. 

He bites his lip, his brain still running a mile a minute trying to come up with a logical explanation. “Anything I tell you is going to sound insane,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead.

“Well, I already have first-hand proof that whatever it is, it’s real,” Shiro points out. “So just tell me the truth, and we can figure it out from there.”

 _Just tell me the truth_. Even a Muggle has got to know it’s not that simple. Still, Keith has to admit he has a point — at least a _little_ bit of a point. 

“Okay,” he says, sighing deeply and lifting his head to pin Shiro with what he at least hopes is a quelling glare. “Look. If I tell you — what I’m about to tell you, I need you to understand that you can’t tell a single soul. Not your mom. Not your best friend. Not your spouse. Not now, and not tomorrow, and not fifty years from now. I could — we _both_ could get in some serious shit if you do. I’m already not exactly beloved by the, uh, the powers that be,” he adds dryly.

There’s still a spark of something warm and friendly in Shiro’s eyes, but his face hardens, growing serious. “You didn’t escape from a lab, did you?” he asks, clearly going for a little bit of humor, but with a tone of voice that makes it clear he’s not entirely joking.

“No,” Keith says, huffing a dry laugh. “No, ugh — honestly, I wish. That would probably be a lot easier to explain, to be perfectly honest.” 

Shiro laughs dryly, then winces a little — which, all on its own, is enough to make Keith’s stomach drop — and says, “I can swear up and down and sideways not to tell anyone anything from this point forward. But I sort of… mentioned the part where you were a cat and then you turned into a guy to someone already.”

Keith feels his words hit in the chest like someone’s thrown a boulder at him; he’s well aware his shock and fear must show on his face, and sure enough, Shiro quickly adds, “But I can call and tell him I must have hallucinated, or I can — I mean, trust me, if there’s anyone who can keep a secret, he can. He’s my best friend, he’s — he comes off as kind of a blabbermouth when you first meet him, but believe me, I’d trust him with my own life.”

“You might be trusting him with mine,” Keith says woodenly, then shakes himself a bit. That might be a bit of an overreaction; it’s not as though they’re going to _execute_ him if it gets out that he’s apparently let _two_ Muggles in on the big secret. Then again, life in Azkaban is arguably worse.

“Look,” Shiro says, holding both hands out in front of himself placatingly. “Obviously I knew already that there was something weird going on. I had — I mean, I had some idea that it’s probably not something that I should go shout from the rooftops, okay? I made a _conscious_ decision to tell Matt, and — I mean, even if he _did_ tell anyone, who the hell would believe him?”

“ _He_ believed _you_ ,” Keith points out. “Apparently.”

Shiro frowns a little, shaking his head. “I’m not really sure he did. I think he probably thinks I — well, that it was a hallucination, like I said, or even if he does believe me, it’s only because of exactly how much he trusts me. And he’s… kind of a weird guy, anyway. Believe me, most people would laugh me, or him, or _anyone_ out of the room if you tried to tell them.”

He really does have a point there; that’s part of the whole _thing,_ the reason the Wizarding world has never been found out before now, even though accidents do happen and you can’t Obliviate _everyone_. People don’t want to believe things even when they’re right before their eyes sometimes, let alone when someone is telling them the story of something that happened ‘to a friend of mine, I swear, you’ve never met him but he lives in London…’

“You can’t tell anyone else,” he says firmly, trying his best to glare at Shiro. “No one. And you’d better make sure he knows he can’t, either.” He hesitates a moment, then adds, “And you can’t tell him any of what I’m about to tell you. Just — I mean, I can’t help what he already knows, I guess.”

Shiro nods immediately. “I swear.”

Keith takes a deep breath, then says, “Well, first of all, I’m a wizard.” 

There’s a beat of silence.

“A wizard,” Shiro says, blinking, then clears his throat. “And — sorry, that’s just the first part?”

“Most wizards can’t turn into cats,” Keith tells him matter-of-factly, since at this point he figures he might as well just put it plainly. “I’m a special kind of wizard, I guess you could say. We’re called Animagi. Uh — not all Animagi are cats, we’re all something different. Supposedly it fits your personality somehow, or at least that’s what they told me.”

“I can see that,” Shiro says, almost blankly, then shakes his head. “Okay, so if not all wizards are like you, then not only are there others, but there are — you know — a lot of others? Enough that you can make categorical distinctions like that?”

Keith snorts. “There are wizards and witches everywhere,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “All over the world. We just don’t usually interact much with Muggles; I wouldn’t be shocked if I’m the first one you’ve ever actually _seen_ , but I assure you you’ve been walking right past Wizarding shops and driving past Wizarding villages your entire life.”

“Muggles?”

“Non-magic users. ‘Normal’ people, I guess, to you.”

“I see,” Shrio says, and — remarkably — he _does_ sound like he sees, or at least like he’s not about to decide that Keith’s crazy after all and he must have just imagined what he saw. “I guess — I mean, like you said, anything you could have told me would have sounded nuts. I guess this makes as much sense as anything.”

Keith stays silent for a long moment, just watching him, a little wary, to make sure he’s not about to change his mind. It seems a little too easy to him, somehow — aren’t Muggles supposed to be afraid of witches and wizards, at least? Isn’t that what all the witch burnings were about? History was never his best subject, but he at least remembers that much. But Shiro doesn’t seem frightened at all, or even dubious; in fact, the longer they sit there in silence, the more time he has for what Keith’s saying to sink in, the more a look of excitement and curiosity takes over his face. 

“Have you always known you were a wizard?” he asks, perhaps after it becomes clear that Keith’s not going to say anything else. “I mean, were you born that way, or did it take you some time to figure out? And is magic invisible to — uh, Muggles, or is it just well-hidden?”

When Keith just stares at him, blinking, with his mouth slightly open, he adds, “How does it _work_?”

And Keith, because he is an idiot, and because Shiro is still, despite the current circumstances and against all odds, incredibly charming, and probably the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen, says, “Uh — I can show you?”

Instantly, a grin so bright it’s nearly blinding sweeps over Shiro’s face, and he has to hold his hands up in a panic to forestall the immediate request for heaven only knows what. “But I have to —” Abruptly, he realizes that it’s not his own shirt that he’s wearing. It’s much too large; it must be Shiro’s. And he doesn’t have any trousers on, either, which means his wand is God only knows where. “What did you do with my clothes? And my wand, more importantly?”

“Oh! I washed your clothes,” Shiro says, standing abruptly. “I can go get them for you, I’m sure you probably want to change. Your wand — well, I’m glad I didn’t throw it out, I guess. It just looked like a stick, but it also looked like kind of an important stick, and most people don’t keep sticks in their pants for no good reason, so…” He reaches over and rummages through a desk drawer for a second, and passes Keith his wand. It looks fine; not damaged at all by any of the ruckus that no doubt occurred while Keith was bleeding from the shoulder, or from being tossed around in Shiro’s desk. Then again, it’s been through a lot worse. 

Keith looks up from inspecting it to see Shiro looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised. He sighs a little, but can’t hold back his own grin. The rest of this situation might kind of suck, but getting to show off a little to a very handsome man who’s nursed him back to health and who didn’t even know magic existed a few minutes ago…

He doesn’t even have to do anything particularly difficult for it to be impressive, he figures. He twitches his wand slightly, mutters “ _Nox_ ,” and turns out all the lights in the room.

When he _lumos_ es them back to their initial brightness, he’s met with Shiro smiling ear-to-ear. “Can’t argue with that,” he says, gesturing at the lights. “I guess you really are a cat-wizard.”

“Animagus,” Keith corrects, fidgeting slightly with his wand. He thinks fora moment, then decides that he’s already fucked the Statute of Secrecy enough to land himself in Azkaban, more than likely, so it’s not as though he can do _more_ harm at this point, can he? “I can answer the rest of your questions, but I do want to get changed first. And probably use your bathroom.”

“Small price to pay,” Shiro says, his smile softening and somehow, impossibly, warming further at the same time. “I bet I can even throw tea and soup into the bargain.”

Keith absolutely can’t help himself; he smiles back. “In that case, you have a deal,” he says, and tries not to think too hard about the potential consequences.

—

“So let me get this straight,” Shiro says.

“Try your best,” Keith replies, smirking a little. Even the condensed, 5-minute version of a summary of wizarding society, delivered across Shiro’s kitchen table over mugs of tea and bowls of chicken soup, seems like it would be a lot to take in. He’s pretty sure _he’d_ be confused.

“You were raised by what basically sounds like a small militia, all of whom are Animagi like you, which is technically illegal, because you’re not registered with the government,” Shrio replies, ticking things off on his fingers. “When you turned 11, you went to school in Scotland with all the other wizard kids in Britain, at a place called Hogwarts. You’re serious that your school was named Hogwarts?” he adds. “That’s honestly the only part so far I don’t believe.”

“I can show you my old school robes if you want,” Keith says around a mouthful of soup. “They’ve got the crest on and everything.”

“Okay,” says Shiro, still sounding a little dubious. “So, Hogwarts. Then a couple of years ago, an evil dictator wizard who everyone thought was dead came back and took over the entire country, and that’s why there were so many natural disasters and things in the UK at that time, and then he got defeated by a kid you knew from school.”

“I wouldn’t say I _knew_ him, really,” Keith replies, shrugging. “He was in the year above me, and I didn’t really… have a ton of friends at school. I kept to myself. And he wasn’t the _only_ one — almost all of us fought.”

“Regardless,” Shiro presses. “A classmate.”

Keith shrugs again. “Yes.”

“Okay, so then the dictator was killed for good, and the wizarding government went back to being mostly non-evil,” Shiro says. “You have a wizard Prime MInister?”

“Minister of Magic,” Keith says. “But close enough.”

“And wizard cops, and wizard doctors,” Shiro continues, still ticking off on his fingers. “No army? Seems like that kind of thing might have helped with the dictator. Although I guess not if he took over that, too.”

“There haven’t been any wars between wizarding nations in a long, long time,” Keith says. “There just aren’t enough of us, and we mostly have enough problems without adding that to them. It’s mostly more ‘dark wizards against everyone else,’ so we don’t really have armies the way you lot do, I guess.” He pauses a minute, then takes a look as subtly as he can at Shiro’s prosthetic arm, and adds, “Why do you ask?”

“I was in the Air Force,” Shiro replies, not even missing a beat. “In the war in — wait, do you even _know_ about any of the Muggle wars? Do you learn about our history, or just your own?”

“Mostly our own,” Keith admits. “Yours only when it impacts us.” He frowns. “Is there a war, right now? I spend a lot of time in Muggle London, you’d think I would have… noticed? Then again, most people don’t really talk about current events with cats.”

“There are a few,” Shiro says, smiling a little thinly. “Probably best if we table that whole thing for another day, though. It’s a bit of a downer, especially my part of the story.”

“Sure,” Keith says quickly. “I don’t want to, uh, pry.”

Shiro waves him off. “I’ve been asking you enough invasive questions, I owe you at _least_ one in return. But — rain check, okay?”

“Okay,” Keith agrees. There are, he thinks, other invasive questions he’d rather ask Shiro anyway; he glances across the table as surreptitiously as he can as he bows his head over his bowl of soup, trying to decide if it’s worth the potential consequences just to end up no doubt having his hopes dashed.

Still. Better to know than not know, right?

“So,” he says, clearing his throat. “Uh, in terms of other… questions… about you.”

Shiro tilts his head, meeting Keith’s gaze steadily, one eyebrow raised in question. “Go ahead.”

“You mentioned you don’t really know a lot of people here,” Keith says. “Do you… have people back in America? Uh, friends, family…” He hesitates, without meaning to, cursing himself for failing to keep his question as casual as he’d intended. “...girlfriend? Boyfriend?”

“Friends, sure,” Shiro hums. “My best friend was on Skype giving me directions on how to stitch you up, actually. That’s how he — I mean, he was the one I, um, told.” He shoots Keith a sheepish expression, then adds, “His name is Matt. He and his whole family basically adopted me when he and I were in college together — I went to school pretty far from home, so it was nice to have a place off-campus that was so welcoming that I could get to without a plane ticket. And my parents still live in California. As for, uh…” 

He bites his lip a little, hesitating, and the look makes Keith’s head spin. It’s not — he’s overthinking it, probably. Definitely, absolutely, without a doubt he is overthinking it. But then Shiro says, “No boyfriend. An ex — we were engaged, we broke up right before I was discharged. But no boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Keith says, trying his best to keep his voice perfectly blank and avoid saying something monumentally stupid like _Would you like one? I can help you out with that._ “I see. I’m… sorry.”

Shiro shrugs. “I think we’re both probably going to be much happier this way, in the long run. We had some… fundamental conflicts. But he’s a good guy.”

“Is that part of why you moved here?” Keith asks. “You lost all of America in the split?”

That earns him a laugh, surprisingly bright and easy despite the topic at hand. “Not quite, but… I guess you could kind of look at it that way, if you turn your head and squint.” Shiro shrugs. “I needed a complete and total change of pace. And it’s worked out okay so far. I mean, if nothing else, I met you, didn’t I?”

And there it is again: another soft, open expression on his face that makes Keith promptly forget that he’s ever known how to breathe. It’s impossible to turn away, but it feels a little bit like he’s staring directly into the sun, his heart pounding in his ears. He must be tomato red, but mercifully, Shiro’s kitchen is devoid of mirrors, so there’s no way for him to tell for sure.

“Yeah,” he finally manages, half-choking on the word. “You — yes. You did.”

There’s a long, heady moment where they just stare across the table at each other, neither of them saying a word; Shiro leans closer, just slightly, setting his elbows on the table and nudging his mug of tea out of the way, and Keith has to make a conscious effort to stay frozen, neither jolting backward or leaning in himself and taking this possibly farther and faster than he’s really comfortable with. He manages to stay still and just stare at Shiro, who’s looking at him with an indescribable expression the likes of which Keith has never, ever seen directed at himself before. He thinks he’s seen similar ones, but he’s certainly never been on the receiving end, and the warm light in Shiro’s eyes makes him feel like he’s about to melt straight through the floor.

Finally, though, Shiro looks away, bowing his head down towards the table and laughing a little. The very tips of his ears, Keith notices, are distinctly redder than the rest of him. 

“I should stop bugging you and let you eat,” he says, and somehow Keith almost jumps at his voice, even though they’ve only been sitting there in silence for perhaps a minute at most. “And probably shower, too. Uh — no offense.”

“None taken,” Keith says, sniffing himself discreetly and wincing. “I definitely need one. Thank you,” he adds, gesturing around at Shiro’s flat with one hand. “For the soup, and for not turning me over to your government or whatever, and, uh, for everything.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” Shiro says as he stands from the table, grabbing his mostly-empty bowl and mug and moving to carry them towards the sink.Then, like a parting shot over the bow of a passing ship, he adds, “The pleasure has been all mine.”

Keith is left alone in the kitchen to slouch a little in his seat and contemplate the word _pleasure_. Of course, there are a million other things to consider — how much Kolivan is going to kill him if/when he finds out about this, whether or not Shiro’s friend is _actually_ going to keep Keith’s secret, how long it’s acceptable to linger in Shiro’s flat, imposing on his hospitality while soaking up whatever it is about him that draws Keith like a moth to a flame. Still, those are all things, he reminds himself, that he can deal with later — after he’s finished his soup, had a shower, and maybe asked if Shiro has a spare toothbrush. 

_And the part where you want to jump his bones, but also you want to hold his hand and stare into his eyes forever?_ asks a traitorous voice in the back of his head.

Before Keith can even try to formulate an answer for that little voice, Shiro pops his head back into the kitchen, making him jump.

“Look,” he says, then stops, taking another half a step so that he’s hovering in the doorway of his own kitchen as though he thinks Keith might try to kick him out. He looks — distinctly nervous, which is setting off warning bells in Keith’s head which are only exacerbated by the blush high on Shiro’s cheekbones.

Keith hesitates for a long, long moment, before asking, “Yeah?”

“I know this is probably the worst possible time to ask this,” Shiro says, running a hand through his hair and mussing up is forelock. “I mean — I thought you were a cat like thirty-six hours ago, which is pretty weird. But do you — I mean, would you want to —”

“Yes,” Keith replies immediately, before he can talk himself out of it, before he can think to hard about the fact that he might end up turning this into a disaster. “Yes. I definitely want to.”

Shiro hesitates for just a moment longer, like he’s waiting for Keith to take it back, and then that blinding grin creeps over his face again.

“Definitely?” he echoes, still standing halfway through the doorway.

“Definitely,” Keith repeats, as firmly as he’s able.

“Good,” Shiro says. “That’s great news. I’ll leave you to your soup, then.” And just like that, he’s gone again, though Keith can almost hear a little skip in his step as he pads away down the hall.

He’s left staring at the once-again-empty doorway, his heart in his throat, his cheeks burning.

_Well,_ he thinks. _That at least answers one question_ , and, unable to quite tamp down on his own smile, he goes back to eating his soup.


End file.
